Appendix A is Awesome!

I am starting a new campaign, and I am having too much fun with Appendix A in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. For those who don’t have the book, Appendix A is a series of tables that allow for the creation of a random dungeon. It’s not the first such tool to ever exist, but I am finding it to be a well-designed one that’s helping me create an excellent first dungeon for my PCs.

There’s an obscene amount of charts here, from structures (Passages, Doors, Chambers, etc.) to room purposes (Lair, Maze, Death Trap, etc.), to random dungeon obstacles, traps, and tricks. I’m not being a slave to the dice, but instead letting the rolls build a framework until I decide that, no, I want *this* or *that* to be *here* and to serve *this* purpose. It’s a great tool for a DM who needs inspiration.

With mostly random dice rolls, I’ve created an abandoned military dungeon area from it beneath a small ruined keep, complete with a large indoor training room, a jail area (non-random, I decided it needed it), command chambers, etc. The resulting dungeon is manageable in a session: eight rooms, a couple of them hidden, and a passage flow that makes some sort of logical sense if I task the rooms right, and two different entrances/exits to the surface.

Once my party goes through it I will have to post a version of it here, just in case anyone is curious.